Sunday, October 26, 2008

Mudslinging Fun at Pulau Tiga In Sabah

Step on the lawn of the Pulau Tiga resort in Sabah, Malaysia, and you are quite likely to encounter mud-covered, mutant-like figures heading for the sea.

You would be forgiven for thinking you had stumbled on the set of a movie about a scientist whose experiments had gone horribly wrong. After all, the island off Sabah does have a Hollywood connection. It was the location for the very first season of the popular reality TV show Survivor, which debuted in 2000.

But, really, the unkempt figures would just be resort visitors who had enjoyed a therapeutic mud bath, courtesy of Mother Nature.

Pulau Tiga was formed in 1897 when an earthquake on Mindanao in the southern Philippines caused a volcanic eruption north of Sabah.

More geothermal activity over the next 40 years resulted in an island that is 4.5km long, 1.5km wide and 20.7sqkm in size. The last eruption was in 1941 but mud still oozes from a few vents on the surface of the island.